Emmylou Harris

Dolly Parton RIP (I Will Always Love You)

By the time that this gets posted, the news of the passing of country music legend Dolly Parton is well known. To say that she was an icon is cutting it lightly. Her voice, talent, good looks, and business sense made her loved by millions of people, whether they were music fans or not.

Her life story is posted throughout the internet, so I won’t go into it here. What I will talk about is my early experience of her music and her love and respect for bluegrass music.

Growing up, our family vacations consisted of two weeks during the summer staying at an uncle’s cottage at Higgins Lake, Michigan. Back in the 1970s, the area was still backwoods, despite a building up of tourist motels for those flocking to swim in the beautiful lake. It always seemed to rain at least one Saturday of the time there. Television was a black-and-white tube set with rabbit ears that barely picked up two stations from the Traverse City area. If stuck in the cottage on a rainy Saturday afternoon, we would watch the grainy syndicated The Porter Wagoner Show. His duet partner at the time was Dolly. My uncle used to make fun of her, but my dad loved her. I could see that she had that Southern Belle charm that any man would fall for. Unfortunately, the show was never available in the Detroit area, so that was the only time I got to see this angel with the powerful voice.

Of course, she would eventually leave the show, go off on her own, and create an amazing solo career, along with recording the Trio sessions with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Her talent was not only in music, but was showcased also in a number of television shows and movies. As she became more wealthy, instead of just buying tons of cars and houses, she invested in a number of business dealings, most notably the Dollywood amusement part in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. She also started many charitable organizations, among them the Imagination Library, which gave books to pre-school kids so that they had reading skills when starting their education.

Dolly loved all kinds of music, and because of her growing up in Tennessee, bluegrass music was in her heart and soul. Many of her country music albums, as well as the Trio recordings, had an acoustic bluegrass feel to them. However, in the early 2000s, she decided to record a trilogy of more strict bluegrass albums. It started with 1999’s The Grass is Blue, followed by Little Sparrow (2001) and Halos & Horns (2002). Some of the best bluegrass musicians in the industry were on these recordings, and along with original material, she recorded some non-bluegrass songs (“Shine” from Collective Soul and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven). “Shine” won her a Best Female Country Vocal Performance the following year.

Bluegrass fans and artists have always loved her back. Her compositions “Jolene” and “Coat of Many Colors” have been recorded and performed live by numerous bluegrass bands, as they so perfectly fit into the genre.

It is hard to accept that Dolly is no longer with us. Perhaps because she had such a long and successful career, we all thought that she would be with us forever. Fortunately, her music will always be with us. And we can pretty much guarantee that she is singing with the Angel Band right now.

Chew on it and comment.

The 1970s through 1990s were a struggling time for traditional country and bluegrass music. Movies like Urban Cowboy were bringing rock, pop, and even disco influences into the country music vein. It was the start of moving country music stars from honky tonks to arenas, with overdriven guitars and light shows becoming the norm. There were a few sparkles of traditional country lights within the realm, but they were few and far in between. The Grand Ole Opry began to lose its charm, with old stalwarts re-hashing past hits to a senior citizen crowd for nostalgic purposes.

The tail end of the punk/new wave movement did show a lot of respect to the spirits of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, as well as some near forgotten legends like Johnny Cash, Porter Wagoner, and Loretta Lynn with speed-driven covers and originals that paid musical tribute. However, it would be at least a decade until the fledgling cow-punk and alt-country sub-genres would blossom into what we now know as Americana music.

So during those dry times, there were a few performers that kept the flame going because their hearts were in the right place. Highways and Heartaches: How Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, and Children of the New South Saved the Soul of Country Music provides a decent chronicle of that time by looking at the musical lives of Skaggs, Stuart, and a number of other musicians from that era and group.

The first chapter is a bit too politically correct for my taste, as while it looks at Skaggs’ poor upbringing in Kentucky, it looks at Stuart’s upbringing as being heavily influenced by the racial tensions in his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi. While I am sure that there was a lot more bigotry around back in the 1950s, the author Michael Streissguth narrates it as if it was in the blood of every white person in the South. There is way too much coverage of segregation, lynchings, and other racially motivated happenings that have very little to do with the musical influences of Stuart.

Later chapters cover the legacy of Ronald Reagan and the influence of the Moral Majority. Again, it all passes as the author trying to be politically correct and apologetic for being white.

Once the reader gets past that, the flow if the book is quite interesting. Even if you are familiar with both Skaggs’ and Stuarts’ early careers, there are a few things that you may still learn. We all know of Skaggs’ work with Keith Whitley and Ralph Stanley, but there were a lot of inner struggles that he was having to move out on his own, as well as wanting to be known as a serious go-to musician and arranger. For Stuart’s part, his early teen years with Lester Flatt would cement him as a bluegrass prodigy, but the downside is that he really never got to live life as a normal teenager. He spent almost all of that time surrounded by older bluegrass musicians that had their ways of drinking, carousing, and occasional fighting, and his studies were spent in a tour bus instead of a normal high school.

While the gist of the book follows the career of these two modern legends, there is also ample coverage of other artists from that time. These include Jerry Douglas, Emmylou Harris, Larry Cordle, and Linda Ronstadt. Bluegrass coverage includes extensive mentions of J.D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson, the Seldom Scene, and the many festivals that were popping up due to the public’s interest in roots music from both the liberal and conservative teams.

If you can get past the PC talk, this book makes for an interesting read, learning how much Skaggs and Stuart were able to keep traditional country and bluegrass alive during this dark time, and become the highly respected statesmen that they are.

Chew on it and comment.